FreezeFrame: A Moment in Time
by Havoc
Summary: Jordan running away. Inspired by the last shot of the season finale.


Freeze-Frame: A Moment in Time  
  
Running into the rain, where all thoughts end, where everything ends. Water, cold and chill down her face. Nothing real around her, it's like the whole world has come to a stop and she just keeps running, trapped into a still-life, no way out of this place. She had come back to Boston because Garret had called, she had started her life over again--_be honest, it's not just again, it's again and again and again and again, no happy ending here for you_-- and she had though that maybe she had found a place for herself here. Garret was a good boss, he didn't get on her case too much, gave her the freedom she needed to work the way she wanted to. Sure, he looked at her with that hangdog face, pleading for her to let go, let loose, not get so lost in every case-- _you've always cared too much about everything that wasn't you_. She had good friends here, new ones and old ones, people who kept coming back no matter how hard she kept pushing them away. They should have walked the first time she shoved though, becuase look, here she goes hurting them again, just like she always said she would. She had her father here, which up until tonight had seemed like a good idea, the best idea. She thought they could be a family again. She had thought she could make a life here, one that lasted, one she could keep. But it was all coming back again, everything was coming back and here she is running again, trying to find peace. Elusive, incomprehensible, her carrot on a stick, something that can only be chased and never caught.  
  
He had said he knew who killed her mother. But he had played her, used her, and her still thinking the game isn't over when in her heart she knows it ended years ago. _Who are you kidding, Jordan?_ Nothing was what it was suppossed to be. Her mother wasn't the kind face and loving arms she remembered from her childhood. Her father wasn't the hero she always believed him to be. She wished she could have hung on to all the absolutes of childhood, she wished that she had never had to grow up, had never had to remember. Was this why it was so easy for her father to put her mother, his wife, behind them, after she died? Because she was crazy? Becuse he wasn't as perfect as she had always hoped he wa?. How do you forget something like that? Memory is like a curtain, closing secrets in its deep folds.   
  
And yet, and yet...was her father wrong? Was he everything she said he was, when she found out the truth about the frame, about the falsified records? He hadn't let the lunatic play him, like she had. He had looked at the man and seen the truth, seen a killer, where she just looked and saw another person to use. How can she even tell which of them was more wrong, who can she point the finger at to blame. He father put a killer away on a lie and she had let the same man go on another.   
  
_Why do you keep using them, Jordan? Have you ever thought about that? Is anyone real to you?_   
  
She couldn't hep but remember Woodie, always there these last few days, always helping her, no matter how many times he repeated that this was going to get him in trouble. He had said he would make it right when she found the bodies, those three empty shells of humans, left alone, left forgotten, turning to dust and bones hidden in their makeshift grave. He had said she was never, never there. God, how she wished she was never there. But she was, and all of Woodie's protests couldn't change the facts of her life. The only places she had ever been were the ones she should never have travelled to.  
  
But Woodie just kept coming-- _push him away Jordan, push him away, he's too close, way too close_. And she kept letting him come closer. He came tonight, beaten by the rain, beaten by her refusal to ask for help while she was drowning in the storm. Everything fell apart like the rain: her job, her family, everything, and there's Woodie standing in the door, offering her everything he has and he doesn't even think twice about it. Hell, he knew she was going to try to find the guy. He knew what thoughts she was thinking. He didn't have to see the gun to know it was there. He might be wet-behind-the ears, he might be some farm boy, but he was a cop at heart and he wasn't stupid. She always knew he wasn't stupid. At least not at his job. Some part of him has to be dumb though, becuase what kind of person offers to throw his whole life away for a woman who can't give him anything? Everything is a lie. Everything but him, standing there like heroes were still real, and even that bit of truth was too much. Nothing was what it was suppossed to be, and she went running out into the rain, trying to run into the past, trying to make everything right.   
  
There's no making any of this right. There is no missing that she had left her future there, wet and dripping in her apartment, to go chasing after a man who no doubt vanished into the wind like so much chaff. Eberything blows away, given enough time. Who knew that better than her, the eternal willow-o-wisp? Everything vanishes, everything fades away to grey and ashes. Memories are intanigible, imperfect. Look at her past for convincing. _Where do you think you're going, Jordan?_ The past will never be perfect, nothing will be perfect again, or even that fake perfect that she was willing to settle for.   
  
_You threw it all away again._ How many lives can a person get?  
  
_You're going to have to start all over all again. _ It's getting harder and harder, isn't it?   
_  
No job, no friends, no family, no nothing. _ Nothing is going to get really old, really fast.  
_  
No future when you chase the past._ She wants to let it go, wishes she could let it go, but the past hangs on with teeth and claws and it drags her back farther with every inch of freedom she tries to get.  
_  
What future can you have when you're stuck in one place?_ When the truth is, she never had a future. Her life had all been pieces of the past and maybe she was a fool to think anything different.  
  
_You were only ten. _She's still ten. She's been ten since her mother died, and there's no getting older now. She's stuck in time, like a fly in amber.   
  
She's the only thing moving in the perfect picture of the past. Live doesn't work in rewind, but you can freeze frame. And the cold chills her to the very bone. If she can just run fast enough, far enough, maybe she can finally come to the other end of her past.   
  
Freeze.   
  
Frame.  
  
_There's a killer on the loose and you let him go._


End file.
